1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to Internet technology and, more particularly, to providing systems and methods for enabling peer-to-peer social networking between users.
2. Description of the Related Art
Social networking has become very popular among Internet users not only for staying in touch with friends, but also for meeting new people from different parts of the world. According to a conventional social networking technology, users create their personal profiles with a social networking service and make them available for online access by other users. This enables users to find other users with similar backgrounds, interests, political views, etc. and thereby establish social connections. It should be noted that in the above schema, all the user's profile information is stored on a central server or multiple servers operated by the provider of the social networking service.
The biggest drawback of the above-described conventional methodology is rooted in the fact that the existing social networking services store massive amounts of users' personal data on their central servers. This diminishes the user's ability to exercise control over dissemination of user' own personal information. This means, for example, that user's party pictures from his or her youth can circle back up and adversely impact their professional career or professional reputation many years in the future.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method that would enable users to interact, meet new friends and stay in touch with existing friends on social networks, without storing all their personal data on social networking provider's centralized server system.